


You agree to be responsible for the universe where the oceans glow red

by feverbeats



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Legends - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: F/M, Ghosts, Legends
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-03
Updated: 2020-08-03
Packaged: 2021-03-05 20:07:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,269
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25681045
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/feverbeats/pseuds/feverbeats
Summary: Rey called Ben haunted, but she's the one with ghosts in her head.
Relationships: Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 2
Kudos: 2





	You agree to be responsible for the universe where the oceans glow red

**Author's Note:**

> Q: WHAT.  
> A: Ummmm fusion of sequel trilogy and Legends canon?
> 
> Q: WHY.  
> A: Look. This is what happened for me when I saw Rise of Skywalker. Don't ask me to explain.
> 
> Q: Is it reylo tho?  
> A: Kind of but not really! GOODBYE.
> 
> Title from Introduction To Quantum Theory by Franny Choi.

**Tatooine, ghosts in the sand**

Rey called Ben haunted, but she's the one with ghosts in her head. Now that she's asked the voices of the past to be with her, she can't turn them off. She can put names to very few of the, but sometimes they talk to each other, so she gradually begins to learn. Qui-Gon talks in a cool, soft voice about the living force. Luke snaps at her and the others. Anakin and the woman named Ahsoka talk _to_ Rey more than any of the others do. One of them, a girl named Jaina, laughs sometimes and compares notes with Anakin on flying.

They don't all agree with each other. Rey's idea of what being a Jedi means is one tiny grain of sand compared to all of the competing voices in her head. None of them quite match everything she can feel swirling inside her.

They don't talk about the darkness. Can ghosts be afraid? Or is Rey the only one with lightning in her fingertips, in her veins? She pulls ships down out of the sky, Luke raises them up. What is she?

Rey wakes up every day not knowing where she is, although she's been here for three months. The old homestead in the sea of sand feels just as empty as it did when she moved in.

She told Finn and Poe that she needed space to think things through, but that can't be right, because her mind has been empty since she landed here. Maybe it's more true that they need space. They promised her she'd never have to feel extra or less important, but that doesn't mean she can be with them every second. It doesn't mean she even wants that.

Rey has always thought she knew who she was. She was Rey, and then she was chosen, and then she was nobody again, and then she was a Palpatine. Now maybe she's a Skywalker, at least in her heart. But somehow, those things don't add up to knowing herself or what comes next.

She's gone through some of the motions she thinks she was supposed to go through. She lies completely still when she wakes up and tries to reach out and feel all of the Jedi who live in her. She knows most of their names now, even. But even when they mutter and whisper and chatter, it feels just like before, training in the jungle with Leia. She felt everything for a moment and now she feels...

Nothing. Not happy or sad. She can feel the force flow through her, but she doesn't even know what that means. She's full of the ghosts of the past with no roadmap for the future.

She trains every day. Not with the lightsaber, but with her body. She makes it work, until the rage that keeps welling up turns into a burn in her muscles.

She gets up every day and sets about making more pieces of the old moisture farm work again. It still feels like a ghost town, but it's livable. It's okay. She's a ghost town, too. She has enough blankets to keep herself warm at night. She has supplies, from a few adventures into town.

The force flows through her, but it's sticky with anxiety. She stands under the twin suns wrapped in her robe, cool to the core. She feels trapped in a moment in time, unable to move forward.

It's not about Ben, she thinks. In fact, she hardly thinks of him at all. Maybe that's a mistake, but if she thinks about him too much, she gets tangled in a past that's unreachable.

Nobody comes out to the old Lars homestead, as she learns that the locals call it. She goes into town twice a month for supplies, and outside of that, she doesn't see anyone. It's not so different from Jakku, in some ways. In some ways, it's not so different from going backward.

Then she wakes up one cold, starry night and the voices are completely silent. She's used to at least a murmur, but now, nothing. She takes a breath, lets it out. She can see her breath in the air. She is suddenly blindingly, brilliantly angry. She gets to her feet, feeling every muscle and how it moves. She's never stopped feeling her body, connecting to it, using it. The rest of her, though--

Before she knows she's done it, there's a long, deep lightsaber mark scorched into the wall. She doesn't even know what she's angry about.

She leaves the homestead and walks into the desert. No speeder, just her feet, carrying her. Her legs ache from the unevenness of the sand, but she's used to that. All scrappers are. If she could just stay a scrapper, that would be simpler.

 _I am all of the Jedi_ , she said, but she's not. They chatter around her, but she's not one of them.

On the blank canvas of sand and stars, she sees a shape in the distance. Her breath catches, and she's crying without knowing why either. She gets closer and sees that it's a little boy with dark hair, crouched in the sand. He looks up, and suddenly she's in a completely different part of the desert, and the sun is coming up. It's as if she's lost hours.

A voice she's never heard before says, in her head, _I am one with the force and the force is with me._ She repeats it to herself as she finds her way home.

Under the twin suns, Rey spends the next few weeks, reaching for what the Jedi are. She brought reading with her, and she's been sifting through it. Palpatine may have destroyed a large portion of the Jedi's history, but you can't just erase something so big.

Most of what she reads just confuses her more. The Jedi were, she had thought, like Luke: lonely, and strange, and full of feelings. Some of what she's reading makes it sound like they were a political faction, and a pretty militaristic one.

But the past is dead, and Rey doesn't want to be those Jedi. She doesn't want to be Luke, either. The problem is, she doesn't know what she does want to be.

There's a lot of what not to do. Don't love, don't fear. There's not a lot about what to do when you find something worth loving, or something worth being afraid of.

It's three weeks after the boy, and Rey feels as if she's mostly regained her equilibrium. The suns are setting, and she's meditating on the roof.

Her focus is shot. This always happens. She can't do this, or be here. She's supposed to find her center, but there's no center in her to find. She vaults off the roof and goes to the cheap landspeeder she bought in Mos Eisley two weeks ago. She can forget everything when she's driving or flying. Not very Jedi-like.

She skims over the sand with the wind in her face, only pausing once to wrap another layer of fabric around herself. She doesn't know where she's going, but she feels drawn to something. Before long, craggy cliffs rise up on her left, and soon she has to stop, hemmed in by them. She gets off the speeder with shaking legs.

"Which way?" she whispers.

Nobody answers her, and she feels silly. She lets her feet carry her into a gap in the cliff wall. It doesn't look man-made, just a place where rocks have given way to time. She feels her way in the dark, realizing she doesn't have her saber with her. _Seriously? _a ghost of a ghost whispers. Ahsoka, faint.__

__Soon, though, it doesn't matter. The darkness lifts and Rey is in a cave that opens up to the stars. The floor is rock, with great whorls of sand pushed around by the wind. The sky is brilliant and clear above her._ _

__Suddenly a voice next to her says, "If you think you can figure it all out here, you're kidding yourself."_ _

__Ray turns. It's a young woman about Rey's age, wearing what looks like a fighter pilot's uniform. She has a lightsaber hooked to her belt, and Rey can see the setting suns through her._ _

__"Which one are you?" Rey asks. They almost never appear to her as anything besides voices._ _

__The woman smiles, and it's a sharp smile. "You don't know what this place is, do you?"_ _

__"No," Rey says._ _

__The Jedi doesn't immediately offer anything else. She looks up and then walks to the far side of the cave. It's about as big as the homestead--an open bowl below the sky. The ghost touches the wall. "There are ghosts of people who've walked beside you and then left. Then there are ghosts of people who never were. Not here."_ _

__Rey shakes his head. "I don't understand."_ _

__"I'm not you," the ghost says. "But I could have been. In a world where you and Ben were brother and sister. Where your parents are somebody after all."_ _

__"Why are you telling me this?" Rey whispers, suddenly cold._ _

__The woman looks at her. "Because I lost my brother," she says. "The same way you lost Ben. And I don't think anybody has ever taught you how to grieve, or what it means to truly use the force."_ _

__That makes Rey angry, too, and the anger makes her wonder if the woman is right. "What's your name?" she asks._ _

__"Jaina Solo," the woman says. She smiles her sharp smile. "And I can promise I'm as good a pilot as you are."_ _

__"I've heard you before," Rey says, reaching out wonderingly. It doesn't feel like anything when she touches Jaina's arm._ _

__"Yes," Jaina says. "If you couldn't tell from all the others talking, everybody is a different kind of Jedi from each other. You're the kind that can see people like me. This place just makes it strong. But the ability is yours."_ _

__Rey is suddenly very tired. "What am I supposed to do next?" she asks._ _

__"Meet us in the Endor system," Jaina says. "The sanctuary moon."_ _

__"I've been there," Rey says, fear wrapping itself around her heart. "I don't want to go back."_ _

__"That's why you have to," Jaina says._ _

__**Endor, a place of dead things** _ _

__Rey packs her very few belongings, gets in her X-Wing, and flies to Endor the next day. What would she slow down for? If she slows down, the fear and anxiety and uncertainty will catch up to her._ _

__She steps off the ship wearing her robes, her face hidden deep inside them. No voices in her head today. The grass is wet beneath her feet._ _

__"Why did you bring me back here?" she whispers. She can feel her heart beating in her throat. The air is so heavy with moisture that she feels almost as if she's trying to breathe underwater. She draws on the calm of the force, but something in it feels wrong, and she lets it go. Just be Rey, she tells herself._ _

__She arrives at the bones of the Death Star soaked to the skin, shivering and terrified._ _

__"What are you afraid of?" Jaina asks, besides her now. She's still in her jumpsuit, picking her way through the wreckage of the Death Star as if she's alive._ _

__"Last time I was here, I saw a nightmare," Rey says, thinking of her face that was not her face._ _

__"This isn't about nightmares," Jaina says firmly. "It's about history, kid."_ _

__"I don't want this part of my history," Rey says. "I destroyed Palpatine. And I did it right. I get to turn my back now."_ _

__"Not until you see it and understand it," Jaina says. "You think you don't know the path forward. You need to see what you're turning your back on."_ _

__Everything here smells like rot. Rey is from a desert planet and she lives on a desert planet; she's not used to the scent of mold. This is a new kind of loss, insidious and wet. She shudders, feeling the scent cling to her skin._ _

__"What do you think it was to be one with the force in Palpatine's Empire?" Jaida asks._ _

__"That was before your time," Rey says coldly._ _

__"I have no time, now," Jaina says. "Let me show you something."_ _

__Rey blinks, and the Death Star isn't a corpse. It's a haunted machine, complete and cold. She and Jaina are standing in the middle of a corridor, and everything around them shines. It's clean and full of people in uniforms walking. None of them seem to notice the two women._ _

__Rey knows where they're going. She pulls her robe around herself and walks through the halls to the throne room. It looks different in one piece. It looks bigger. Her breath catches when she sees Palpatine on the throne, and Vader kneeling in front of him._ _

__As she moves to leave, Vader stands, and as he stands, he speaks. "I can take very little more of this, my master. They treat me like I'm one of their _underlings_."_ _

__"And what are you?" Palpatine asks._ _

__"A Sith Lord!" Vader snaps, and Rey's heart nearly stops to hear him talk that way to Palpatine. "You're the one who told me that was worth something."_ _

__"My boy," Palpatine says, cruelly and carefully, "everything I ever wanted, I got through politics. The force is somewhat immaterial at this point."_ _

__"There are different ways of being a Sith Lord, too," Jaina says softly. "Did you know, in my world, Vader is my grandfather."_ _

__The two of them stand there watching their grandfathers stare each other down. Finally Vader says, "What would you have me do? Sit like an animal at your feet, or at the length of my chain?"_ _

__Palpatine smiles horribly. "But I allow you such a long chain, Lord Vader."_ _

__Rey sees Vader's spine stiffen before his whole body seems to droop._ _

__Rey watches the way Vader's body is angled toward Palpatine's, hungry for his words, his presence. Desperately reaching for something that isn't there. A cool tendril of horror coils in her belly. She wonders if that's how Ben felt, how Ben _looked_. She doesn't want to be the towering horror that is her grandfather. She doesn't want to leave someone so empty and furious and lost._ _

__"But you already have,"Jaina says._ _

__Behind the throne, Rey catches a glimpse of the little boy with dark hair, peering out. He's talking, too low for her to hear._ _

__"We have to go," Rey says. She turns, and as soon as the door to the hallway opens, it's destroyed again._ _

__"Now do you understand why you're here?" Jaina asks._ _

__Rey climbs through the shattered heart of the space station._ _

__Jaina follows her, taking the same path with ease. "Vader devoted himself to a religion that was already dying when he joined it as a boy," she says. "When the Emperor rose to power, he gutted the spirit from it and left only the mechanics. When we began to start over--when you began--there was very little left."_ _

__Rey doesn't know if she's looking for a religion. But she is looking for some kind of spiritual center, and she doesn't know where to find it._ _

__There are things she thinks you can't have if you're a Jedi. The ancient texts are very clear. Jedi, it says, cannot love. It clarifies: no personal connections. No lovers, no friends._ _

__Rey could give up one of those things, but not the other. She thinks of Finn and Poe again, who are probably waiting for her. Worrying for her._ _

__Jedi are not allowed other things. The constant low-burning flame in Rey's chest, that's not allowed. No anger. She closes her eyes and remembers Ben screaming, raging. Something in her screams and rages too_ _

__Rey reaches down inside herself, mind empty, no idea what she'll find. Will it be the perfect calm of the light side, or will it be the cloying grip of the dark side?_ _

__When she closes her eyes, though, what she finds is anger. Not the dark side, but just pure rage, pure Rey. What she used to feel on Jakku, before she knew that there was a right way to strike someone down in anger. She fingers a great well of bright lightning, seething in the depths of her. She wonders if this is how Anakin felt, except she's so much more powerful than Anakin._ _

__The lightning rises up inside of her and spills out of her fingers, her hands. It arcs across the sky, lighting everything up with blue. The inside of the terrible shell of the Death Star is blue, blue, blue._ _

__In her head, the nameless ghost whispers, _I am one with the force and the force is with me.__ _

__"Come on," Jaina says softly. "We have somewhere else to be."_ _

__Rey realizes she's crying silently, tears coursing down her cheeks along with the sweat._ _

__**Yavin 4, the temple** _ _

__Rey cries all the way to Yavin. The anger seems to have drained away, and now she's having trouble flying straight because she's so sad. When Ben slipped away, she just felt drained. Now everything is catching up to her._ _

__The place Jaia wanted to show her is so much worse than the grave of the Death Star. Worse than Exegol. Older. In the heart of the jungle where she lands is a temple. She knows this because Jaina tells her, but she can feel it anyway. Her bones shiver. There's a drumming feeling in her body._ _

__She opens her eyes and she's walking down an echoing hallway. She feels as if she's deep under the earth, near the pulsing heart of this world._ _

__"Where am I?" she whispers._ _

__"The Massassi Temple." Jaina's voice is distant and it echoes. She isn't there. Her voice feels like something lowered down to Rey from the real world. Rey knows what Jaina meant on Endor, now. The shell of the Death Star felt like a nightmare, but this is what a nightmare really feels like. She isn't sure she's here. She isn't sure she's awake._ _

__She remembers being at the mouth of the temple, and having to go inside. She has no choice. Something compels her. It doesn't feel like the threads of the force she's followed to the places she's been. It feels stronger, brighter. Like a dark river at her core. She can't turn back._ _

__There's light to see here, but it feels like ghost light. The walls glow a dull orange. The same rotting wet heat that Rey found on Endor is here, in the belly of the temple._ _

__"This isn't a Jedi place," she whispers._ _

__"No," Jaina says. "Their temple was on Coruscant."_ _

__That makes no sense, from what Rey knows of Coruscant. It's supposed to be a city planet, the only life-forms alive are the ones driving speeders. How could you grow and nourish a monastic sect there?_ _

__The path below her feet slopes sharply downward, and before long it opens up into a room. The space is huge, the ceiling stretching away into darkness. In the center is a wide bowl, maybe twice as long as Rey's height._ _

__"Jaina?" she says. Her voice echoes. "Luke?" There's no answer. This time, there's no echo._ _

__Rey closes her eyes and tries to tease out an understanding of this place. She lets the force flow through her, but there's something tainting the flow._ _

__When she opens her eyes, she's in darkness. There are warm walls on each side of her, like sandy stone against her skin. She can barely move, not even enough to get at her lightsaber. Her skin is dry for the first time since she landed on Ender._ _

__And she's not alone anymore. The realization strikes her like a slap across the face. The feeling fades when she realizes her hand is wrapped around somebody else's. In the dark, Rey shuts her eyes and breathes. She can feel Ben's energy. They're here together, and somehow she knows they're in the bowl in the center of the room, curled inside some kind of egg. Waiting, waiting to hatch and destroy the galaxy._ _

___This could be yours,_ he whispers. _This could be true.__ _

__She feels a shudder go through her. She doesn't understand the force. This could be a real offer. How real is death when the dead are cluttering up her mind with their conversations?_ _

__"At what cost?" she whispers._ _

__"You know," Ben says out loud. She can't see him, but she can feel. This whole place is the dark side._ _

__"Walk with me," Ben says._ _

__Rey opens her eyes and they're outside the egg again. They're standing on the roof of the temple, under a low, dark sky devoid of stars. The air clings to Rey's lungs again. Her hand is still in Ben's._ _

__"Do you think anything could happen to you without it happening to me, too?" he asks. "And the other way around? Rey, we're haunted."_ _

__Yes. She was haunted on Tatooine. She was haunted on Endor. She's never going to be able to escape the shadows that cling to both of them._ _

__"Is there a version where you're alive and we're both happy?" Rey asks thickly. But she realizes she's not really asking him. She's asking Jaina, who knows about stories that could be._ _

__"We could be happy like this," Ben says. "Can't you feel it? We'd never be apart. We'd sleep next to each other every night, in the dark of the temple."_ _

__The offer, she realizes, is no longer to rule or destroy the galaxy. It's to be less lonely._ _

__She thinks about the warmth of his hand, and the gold nights on Tatooine. She thinks about the little boy in the desert. She thinks about the kiss that was more relief than anything else._ _

__"I want to say yes," she says._ _

__He nods. "But you've already said no."_ _

__She knows what she has to do, but she doesn't want to do it. She looks at him one last time, as he never was, completely tied to her. Then she closes her eyes. When she opens them again, she's back on her ship._ _

__"Let's go," she tells Jaina. No longer furious or miserable, she just feels empty. "Back to Tatooine."_ _

__"No," Jaina says. "There's one more place."_ _

__**Jedha, the Pilgrim Moon** _ _

__"There are probably other things the Jedi didn't tell you," Jaina says. "Did you know they aren't the only force-sensitive people out there? Being a Jedi is just one option. I should show you Dathomir sometime. That's where my aunt's from. She's been a lot of things, including a Jedi."_ _

__They're not on Dathomir now. They're on Jedha, which is most notable for being a desolate wreck. Rey feels like a desolate wreck, too._ _

__"I think," Rey says quietly, "that I should do this alone."_ _

__When she turns, Jaina is already gone._ _

__Rey walks through the empty streets. They landed next to what used to be Jedha city and is now a ruin of sand. Rey doesn't think anyone lives in this part of the planet anymore, so she's shocked when she runs into two men among the wreckage. One is standing, the other crouched beside him. It takes Rey a few blinking moments to realize they're bluish and blurred around the edges._ _

__"What is your heart made of?" the standing man says._ _

__"What?" Rey asks._ _

__The man who's crouched slowly gets to his feet. "What do you know about kyber crystals?"_ _

__"Who are you?" Rey asks._ _

__"Who are _you?_ " the standing man counters._ _

__"Rey," she says. She expects him to ask her family name. Everyone does, now._ _

__He just nods. "Chirrut. This is Baze. We thought you might need a friend."_ _

__"You don't know what I've done," Rey says. She can feel lightning tingle in her fingers, itching to get out. She can feel the rage that's never really gone out. Ben's tantrums live in her chest, her heart crashing against her ribs._ _

__"I know," Chirrut says placidly. "What, you think we're all good all the time?"_ _

__"You're not Jedi," Rey says. Maybe the rules are different._ _

__"Are you a Jedi?" Chirrut asks. "Jedi can't have what? Love? Anger? Look at the two of us."_ _

__Redy does. They both look so calm, swimming in the force, shimmering with it. Then she closes her eyes and really looks. Baz is bright with anger, positively steaming with it. And Chirrut--he and Baz both, they're tied to each other in a way Rey can't imagine. She could have, briefly, but now that person is a ghost, too._ _

__"I am one with the force," Chirrut says, "and the force is with me."_ _

__It's the nameless ghost. Rey covers her mouth with her hand, ready to cry again. There are no tears left, though, and no real rage, in this moment. She feels empty, but the emptiness twists and turns itself into calm._ _

__"What am I supposed to do?" she asks._ _

__"What are you going to do?" Baze asks._ _

__Rey knows. The Jedi are dead. They don't live in her, except as echoes. The Sith don't live in her either, because she keeps letting go of their hands. All that lives in her is frantic anxiety, and determination, and anger, and love. What does that make her?_ _

___Let the past die._ _ _

__The Jedi are dead. Yes. But whatever Rey is, with a heart of kyber and lightning, with fists full of sparks and a head full of ghosts, that thing is coming to life._ _


End file.
